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Adams - it's time for the truth about collusion

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams MP speaking at the launch of the march and
rally against collusion said:

"Collusion between British state forces and unionist death squads has been a
consistent feature of the 6 county state since its creation.

State forces have shared information, weapons and membership with unionist
paramilitaries.

Over the last 30 years collusion became a daily reality and resulted in some
of the worst incidents of violence including the Dublin/Monaghan bombings
and the reign of terror conducted by the Shankill Butchers.

In the mid-1980s, the British government introduced a new policy to give
them greater control of these death squads. The unionist paramilitaries were
to be re-organised, resourced and directed by the British intelligence
services to ensure that their targeting, to quote a British intelligence
report, was 'more professional'.

Subsequently, British Intelligence recruited, or placed, large numbers of
agents in the loyalist paramilitaries.

The loyalists were armed with modern weapons. In December 1987 over 300
weapons were brought into the north of Ireland, with the full participation
and knowledge of British Intelligence.

British Intelligence updated and organised loyalist intelligence documents
to ensure that the loyalists would, in the words of the British Army
officer, Colonel Gordon Kerr, (interviewed by the Steven's Enquiry) '
concentrate their targeting on known provisional IRA activists'.

Hundreds of people were killed, and many more injured and maimed, in a
campaign of state-sponsored murder.

No member of the Special Branch or British military Intelligence has been
indicted for these crimes. More seriously, this policy of collusion has
never been reversed. It remains, perhaps less active, but nevertheless,
intact today.

The British agencies, which executed this policy, remain in place today. The
Special Branch of the RUC became the Special Branch of the PSNI while the
Force Research Unit of the British Army has been renamed the Joint Services
Group. MI5 continues to operate as before.

The policy of employing the loyalist death squads was not the actions of
rogue agents or individuals who overstepped their responsibilities. It was a
policy endorsed at the highest political level. The British government has
never accepted its responsibility for the deaths which resulted from this
policy.

Sinn Féin, along with the families of the victims of this policy of
collusion, are organising a march and rally to Belfast City Hall, at 3pm on
August 10.

We are calling for a large attendance in support of the families of those
who were killed through the policy of state-sponsored murder and to demand
from the British the truth about its role, and that of its various armed and
intelligence agencies, in the killing of citizens.